My latest evaluation is for no more than a total of 21. That is with a total of just 12 in 2H with the 9 in 1H. But by the end of the 3Q the count could be as much as 15 if the 2 flights at the very end of the month of Sept hold to schedule. That is an average launch rate of 1 launch every 18.25 days.

Number of people who were wrong: 52 (16.25%)Number of people who are right at this date: 18 (5.6%)Assuming anything can happen, the number of people that could still be right: 268 (83.75%)Maximum number of people that could be right at end of year: 45 (14.1%)

My numbers and the estimate is now down at least 3 from the max value I stated in end of June.

At end of Aug the count will be only 12 instead of the possible of 14/15 that was envisioned at the end of June. But the story looks to be that around 8 more flights are in for the year (likely) with a possible +1 for 9 in the next 4 months. It is not likely for the rate to be more than an average of 2 per month but also not likely to be less than an average of 2 per month.

So the high probabilities (unless there is a launch incident) to 18 to 21 with the most likely to be 19 or 20 for the year. Interestingly the highest correct is if the number for the year is 18 which would be 26 correct guesses and the lowest if the number is 19 which would be only 9 correct answers.

The expected center for a 2018 poll based on what has launched so far in 8 months which includes this next upcoming launch this week would be a value of 18. So that would be the logical center value. So what would be the low end and the high end. I would say a low value of "6 or less" and a high value of "26 or more" with values of 7 to 25 incremented by 1 in between. To have individual values of 0 to 6 would not make much sense unless there is a launch hiatus that could last as much as a year because of some incident that happened in 2017. Considering that SpaceX has yet to have a stand-down for barely longer than 6 months.

good discussion, I'll keep it in mind. I don't care about lots of choices. I think I should have went higher before switching to ranges this year.

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"I think it would be great to be born on Earth and to die on Mars. Just hopefully not at the point of impact." -Elon Musk"We're a little bit like the dog who caught the bus" - Musk after CRS-8 S1 successfully landed on ASDS OCISLY

Assuming a trouble-free completion of 2017, I'd say that anything less than 10 orbital launches in 2018 is equivalent to "something goes drastically wrong". Separating out that range is simply betting when in the year that event occurs; we can cover that bet with a 0-9 range at the bottom. Then we can let the optimism express itself by unit increments up to say 30, and break to high-optimism ranges from there up.

Assuming a trouble-free completion of 2017, I'd say that anything less than 10 orbital launches in 2018 is equivalent to "something goes drastically wrong". Separating out that range is simply betting when in the year that event occurs; we can cover that bet with a 0-9 range at the bottom. Then we can let the optimism express itself by unit increments up to say 30, and break to high-optimism ranges from there up.

You might want to take something into account: assuming a trouble free 2017 at two launches per month means SpaceX would reach their previous record streak of succesful launches this year, and reduce their F9 failure rate to the lowest it's been since CRS-7 in februari next year. (before that it was 0%).

People might want to bet on SpaceX having matured enough to no longer have any catastrophic failures, or rather that they're about due for another RUD, according to their personal preferences. That said, another three succesful launches followed by an RUD would still result in a lower failure rate than AMOS-6, which pushed the failure rate to 6.90%. For those still reading: SpaceX already/only improved their failure rate to the CRS-7 level two launches ago. The lowest point to beat is 3.57%, just before AMOS-6.

Sorry for sneeking up on you with gratuitous statistics. Where better to do some numbercrunching than a poll. ;-)

Perhaps just put the numbers 0 to 35 down the left hand column and let the pollers decide.After all you're only saving a few bytes on a web page

If I do the poll next year it is very likely this is exactly what I do. I don't care that some of the low numbers get few or no votes, that's ok. What I mostly care about is how high to go before switching to ranges and whether to go straight to 5 range or do 2 for a while or what.

(I think this is the last year that it was safe to do ranges starting at 21...)

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Or we could have a poll to decide the launch number options of the 2018 poll.

"I think it would be great to be born on Earth and to die on Mars. Just hopefully not at the point of impact." -Elon Musk"We're a little bit like the dog who caught the bus" - Musk after CRS-8 S1 successfully landed on ASDS OCISLY

01-23-45-67-89-1011-1213-1415-1617-1819-2021-2223-2425-2627-2829-3031-3233-3435 or more

I don't think it matters whether they get, say, 21 rather than 22 launches. Once ranges get large enough, it's "around the same". If they get 5/6, it means something's gone horribly wrong. If they get 29/30, it means something's gone horribly right.

If they get above 30 launches next year, switch to triple ranges for the year after. 0, 1-3, 4-6...37-39, 40-42, 43 or more. Once they reach weekly launches, switch to 5-fold ranges.

There are a few other companies that have been suggesting that they would be able to launch much faster than SpaceX, with their reusability/launching to orbit making it impossible to launch regularly. So if SpaceX ever reaches 50+ launches, this poll will probably change somewhat to see who will launch 'most' rockets. Even though we're talking about launch systems with entirely different payload ranges and destinations.

but... what the point of the poll then?I understand historically you want to predict if they beat other (and by how much) providers, failures and such, but with 50+ / year would anyone care to predict at all?

SpaceX still needs to have 3 more successful launches to pass the mean/median of the poll (14.5). But once past that value there will be more that under guessed the number of launches than over guessed. As the numbers continue to climb the ratio gets quickly worse. Which is my way of saying that we are a very pessimistic bunch.

So the high probabilities (unless there is a launch incident) to 18 to 21 with the most likely to be 19 or 20 for the year. Interestingly the highest correct is if the number for the year is 18 which would be 26 correct guesses and the lowest if the number is 19 which would be only 9 correct answers.

I think that was really their core goal, to reach and sustain a launch rate of every 2 weeks.

Which seems to be working.

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SpaceX still needs to have 3 more successful launches to pass the mean/median of the poll (14.5). But once past that value there will be more that under guessed the number of launches than over guessed. As the numbers continue to climb the ratio gets quickly worse. Which is my way of saying that we are a very pessimistic bunch.

I am not sure I agree (and I'm a giant fan boy). I don't think we passed the median in 2015, or in 2016. Let's not count our falcons until they launch.

"I think it would be great to be born on Earth and to die on Mars. Just hopefully not at the point of impact." -Elon Musk"We're a little bit like the dog who caught the bus" - Musk after CRS-8 S1 successfully landed on ASDS OCISLY